Content Delivery

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The Challenge

For any company delivering web-based content to end users, performance is the most important factor to drive customer satisfaction. Reducing network latency and increasing throughput can substantially improve the performance of applications delivering resources over the Internet – whether it’s images, videos, application downloads, or other files.

Companies concerned about performance may choose to utilize a content delivery network in which their content is placed at edge servers closest to their end-users. A content delivery service can improve the performance of your website and can lower your costs by pushing content closer to your users. When evaluating content delivery solutions, consider the following questions:

• How difficult is it to integrate with my application?
• Are there up-front set-up costs, minimum monthly fees, or contractual time commitments?
• What is the lead time before I can start delivering my content? Should I anticipate several rounds of contract negotiations with sales reps and lawyers?
• What is the cost? How can I ensure that I’m getting the best price?
• What if my needs change? Do I need to renegotiate?
• How reliable is the network?
• What is the global coverage of the network?

Content Delivery Using AWS

Amazon CloudFront is an easy-to-use globally distributed content delivery service that delivers static and streaming content. Amazon CloudFront relieves the burden of establishing and maintaining in-house server capacity just to cater to spikes in demand and dynamically adjusts to respond to client needs. With edge locations throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia, your content will be readily accessible to your customers, with the reliability of Amazon’s own infrastructure.

Amazon CloudFront uses Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) as the durable content repository, fetching content as required by clients around the globe and caching it close to your actual users.

Unlike other content delivery networks, there are no contracts or service commitments – you pay only for as little or as much content as is actually delivered through the service. Amazon CloudFront publishes a schedule of fees for content delivery requests and data transferred. Learn more

Benefits at a Glance

Easy to use. Amazon CloudFront is designed to be straightforward and easy to get started. You can simply sign up and start using the AWS Management Console, a variety of third-party management tools, or the well-document AWS web service APIs to manage and maintain your content delivery.

Flexible. With Amazon CloudFront, you don’t need to worry about maintaining expensive web-server capacity to meet the demand from potential traffic spikes for popular content. The service automatically responds as demand increases or decreases without any intervention from you.

Cost-Effective. You pay only for the storage, bandwidth, and other resources you use, with no long-term contracts or commitments to traffic volume. For detailed pricing information, consult Amazon CloudFront pricing.

Reliable. With Amazon CloudFront, you take advantage of a scalable, reliable, and secure global computing infrastructure, the virtual backbone of Amazon.com’s multi-billion dollar retail business that has been honed for over a decade.

Scalable and high-performance. Amazon’s massive compute capacity and storage enables you to scale your application’s storage requirements as your business grows.

Secure. Amazon CloudFront authenticates your interactions with the administrative APIs using the shared AWS authentication service, and additionally requires encryption, using SSL. Content is fetched directly from your Amazon S3 Service Bucket, with no-off network access. For more information, consult the AWS Security Center.

Content Delivery Resources